Bad Neighborhoods

It is not only 'new' webmasters who find Google's 'bad neighborhood' concept confusing, and that may be because google has carefully avoided spelling out exactly what they mean.

Google's Guidelines advise Webmasters Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Most have deduced that Google's spiders will detect one bad site, and then penalize sites who choose to link to that site (you always have a choice). But no webmaster can replicate google's algorithm - and how direct must the link be to be 'trouble'? Do you have to be caught linking to a 'bad site', or are you in trouble if you link to a site which links to a site which links to a bad site?

It's impossible to know for sure, but it would seem sensible to look carefully at sites you are considering linking to, and also review that site's linking policy.

But what are you looking for? There is no certain way of identifying a bad neighborhood, but there are many clues to the risk ... count the risk factors, and you'll usually make a safe choice.

Visit the site run and these checks:

1. Does the site have many links to unrelated sites. Select three at random - two are visibly trash, useless to man or beast, then the link would be risky.
   
   
2. Does the site looks well established? If so, but it has GPR=0, consider that a risk. If you have a Firefox Googlebar, a gray bar for a site that isn't new is very bad news.
   
   
3. Are there site-wide links to unrelated sites: this is a dead giveaway when the site has been built or managed by a third party 'designer' - If their ego demands they appear on every page of a client site, you can usually bet they consider themselves immune from Google's warnings. This is often an error on their part.
   
   
4. When you search for the URL, Google denies all knowledge of it, or lists far fewer pages than you know exist, then the link would be a risk
   
   
5. If you heard about the site in an email from a total stranger, then there's a greater than 98% chance that the site is in the center of a bad neighborhood. While honest webmasters do email sites and request lnk exchanges, they are outnumbered by machine generated spam requests from spam sites.
   Do not trust the email just because it mentions your site by title or URL - machines can do that. A genuine request would have enough comment about your site to convince you that the related site's webmaster has actually visited and reviewed your site. "Nice site" doesn't cut it!
   
   
6. Third party requests on behalf of 'my client' should be read very carefully: few commercial services looking for link exchanges are honest - very few indeed.
   
   
7. A classic sign is the idiot who specifes a link from your GPR=4 page, and offers one from a deep page that isn't even on his site. If he thinks GPR matters, why doesn't he offer a 'fair exchange'?
   
   
8. Page Rank is NOT a safe way to assess a site you never saw before - but a gray bar, or even GPR=0 on a none-too-new site is a flag.
   
   
9. Look at the code, too [Thanks, Blue] - if there's concealed text or other spam methods, don't touch it, even with GPR=9; sooner or later, they'll be caught, and you may be dragged down without warning.
   
   
10. Also look for sites that promote their designer and / or SEO; this isn't (of course) 100% reliable - but folk with that level of vanity are a flag.
    
    
11. Remember that Links To Your Site can rarely get you into trouble unless they are part of a link network - so long as you take care with your outgoing links, you'll be as safe as can be.
    
    
12. And finally, if it looks too good to be true - it very probably is.
    

After the event:

Knowing you have linked to a bad neighborhood is not a science, either;

• Your position in the SERPS may start to slip.
• Your site may be excluded from Google (or other SE).
• Your site performs OK in Yahoo! and MSN, but badly in Google. Google is much more link-focussed, so slippage in Big G alone usually means a link issue.
• Your site's listings may become supplemental, instead of full listings (typically URL only - progressivey until the site all but disappears)

But there may be other reasons for these changes, of course. One method of detection is a little more specific: if you ever link to a bad neighbourhood, you will see your cache date freeze for two days and then revert to a date about two or three weeks back in time - and will stay there until you remove the dodgy link. If you leave the link there for more than about 10 days you'll see your page turn URL-only or supplemental ... and you are really in trouble by that point [Thanks, G1smd].

What To Do About It?

If your site has been penalized for 'bad neighborhood linking' - specifically - then the action required is simple; remove all links that could conceivably be bad; all of them. [b]Do not[/b], at this stage, ask google for reinclusion (reasons why later). in most cases, your site will be picked up again at the next spidering, and - slowly but surely - will regain whatever postion the site had built up. This will not be quick, and there are no short cuts, that's why bad neighborhoods need to be avoided. During 2005, reinclusion with reasonable positions, was reported at 4-8 months (small sample, and this may have changed with the Jagger Updates).

If there is no sign of reinclusion beginning after a few weeks, then it will be necessary to review everything about the site. With Google, one Bad Move may trigger a penalty - but if the site had previous Bad Moves that have escaped detection, their presence may now add to the penalty - there is evidence that 'Suspect Sites' have stiffer filters applied, even if no manual action is taken by Google.

In this case, a very thorough check and correction is vital, followed by a reinclusion request - see Matt Cutt's advice on that. It's important to consider what Matt Cutts did not say about reinclusion. First, you may not need to - clean up, and it may well happen without needing to apply. Building and submitting a Google site map will not hurt, and will ensure you get spidered. Don't ask for a reinclusion it lightly - you can only do it once, and here's why: asking Google requires a human being to check your site. That is serious time investment by Google, in your site. If it ain't clean, don't even think about asking a second time ... it won't happen!

This article is not a complete guide to Bad Neighborhoods - but hopefully will make avoidance a little more methodical.

Published: November 2005 Revised and updated November 2006
This article may be published elswhere, provided this footnote is included as is,
with a live link to the source: http://www.seo2seo.com/articles/
Copyright © 2005-6 Andrew Heenan. Comments very welcome.

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